In an earlier post we discussed the pros and cons of sharing your business idea with other people prior to your launch. Our conclusion was that other people have had your idea anyway, and who succeeds will come down to execution rather than the idea itself, so you're better off sharing your idea and getting feedback and thoughts from anyone and everyone.
To show you why we think that's true, we thought we'd share with you 8 other design your own women's shoe businesses that we've come across since the launch of our custom made women's shoe site, Shoes of Prey.
- Atelier Shoes
- Nina Shoes
- Eidia Lush
- Dream Heels
- ShoesUSA
- Shoes 4 Stars
- Sole Search (A competition run by Steve Madden and Zappo's)
- And there's even another Australian based site - Princess Chic! We've been in touch with Tanya from Princess Chic and will meet up with her in March when we're next in Brisbane.
And no doubt for each of these that actually launched there were 100s of other people who had the same idea but never got around to executing on it.
It's interesting looking at the different takes people have on the idea and how they've addressed the same problems we've encountered. Most of these sites don't let you customise the shoe design a great deal, they focus on letting you change the colours and adding decorations. Dream Heels and Zappos/Steve Madden run shoe design competitions and the winning shoes are produced, you can't actually order your design. And they've all addressed the shoe sizing conundrum and approached their returns policies in slightly different ways.
It's nice to see that other people think the idea has enough merit for them to have launched design your own women's shoes businesses, and the market for women's shoes is massive, so there's no reason that we and all the other businesses above can't all be successful. But having competitors is a good reminder that we need to have a great product and treat our customers well if we want to succeed. :)
Have you seen an idea you've had been executed by someone else?
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